Ralph Breaks the Internet

2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet still confounds me six years later. Modern Disney may be pretty synonymous with bleeding a property dry, but that tendency historically was not reflected by Walt Disney Animation Studios itself, which typically made one movie and then moved onto something else, leaving the other arms of Disney to do all the direct-to-video sequels and animated series. This sequel to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph, however, was an arbiter for what would come, as Disney has become a sequel machine in the years since. However, Ralph Breaks the Internet is such an odd pivot from the video game tribute of its predecessor that it makes the entire “series” feel like an amorphous, malleable thing for Disney to play with. The heroes of Ralph Breaks the Internet enter a physical recreation of the world-wide web, including search engines, social media, online games, and what essentially equates to a digital theme park based on Disney properties. Sure, it’s got some great scenes, like when Vanellope meets the Disney Princesses, but the movie feels like an attempt to replicate Inside Out’s clever realization of concepts of thought, but without the thematic coherence to make it a compelling story. It’s a theme park experience of a movie, just throwing a variety of things at you to make you laugh and entertain you while narrative and meaning falls by the wayside, which is at least one thing that makes it consistent with the first film.